{"id":1316,"date":"2015-06-19T09:57:46","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T09:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherscholar.com\/cherblog\/nest-of-tweets-race-and-donald-trump\/"},"modified":"2023-02-20T08:20:36","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T15:20:36","slug":"nest-of-tweets-race-and-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherscholar.com\/cherblog\/2015\/06\/nest-of-tweets-race-and-donald-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Nest of Tweets (Race and Donald Trump)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Twitter\"<\/a>Every week is an interesting Cher week. Many recent Cher tweets have hit the news feeds included this conservative freak out at Biz Pac Review<\/a>. The tone screams masked bitterness.<\/p>\n

Cher's initial tweet fights over Rachel Dolezal also appeared on Billboard.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I sympathized with Cher on these tweets because for a split second I did too sympathize with this lady. After all, I live with an archaeologist\/anthropologist and I've read scores of essays about gender theory (in service to Cher scholarship and understanding why people call Cher a female drag queen).<\/p>\n

Race and gender are<\/em> constructs of our culture, albeit still very strong ones. There\u2019s no genetic component to black and whiteness or liking Hello Kitty. Humans like to categorize much more than God did apparently. So the idea of fluid borders seems feasible in some humane future world. And the tradition of \u201cpassing<\/a>\u201d has a long history in our society. However, this is the first big story of passing to occur from white to black, from a privileged group to an oppressed group.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not all that offended by white people appropriating black culture (from sampling to the all-out, so-called \u201cwigger\u201d) or by black people assimilating to white culture. Cross-culture happens. It's been happening since the dawn of man. You might ask why it's called appropriating one way and assimilating the other? This is the language of power structures. Assimilation goes to the power group. Appropriation happens from the minority group.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not even so much offended by the lying part. Passing is, by definition, lying. And the real lie is the idea of race in the first place. However, I understand that is an intellectual idea not a living, breathing, bleeding reality.<\/p>\n

\"Taylor\"<\/a>Listening to commentator\/author Goldie Taylor on The Bill Press Show<\/em> this morning, I can see this situation has clearly upset many people. Taylor admitted her response to the story was emotional and called these discussion about the anthropology of race aggravating and beside-the-point because what Dolezal was doing was really nothing more than \u201cthe long con.\u201d<\/p>\n

I would argue that\u2019s what passing is. I would also argue that if Barak Obama, Mariah Carey, or Dwayne Johnson decided to identify as white one day and black another, that time is always a good opportunity to talk about the \u201csocial construct of race.\u201d No matter what the good or bad intentions are of the individuals are. Taylor expressed anger that Dolezal was appropriating blackness without understanding what it was really like to be black in a historical context. This is entirely true. But it\u2019s also true for transgendered women. You could argue there are shades of passing involved here, too. For transgendered women moving from a position of power to minority, they don\u2019t know what it means to be a lifelong woman. And in their case, they are targets and victims of hate violence because<\/em> of their passing.<\/p>\n

However, once again the ability to engage in passing at all favors outward physical characteristics and this continues to stack the deck. Children of mixed race can pass more easily. They have more, forgive the silliness, pass-abilities.<\/p>\n

But in Dolezal's case, there are many more complications to her passing:<\/p>\n